how necessary is solitude in the moments when grief is strongest and
thought most troubled.




CHAPTER V.


Hours elapsed, and the Captain had not returned home. I began to feel
uneasy, and went forth in search of him, though I knew not whither to
direct my steps. I thought it, however, at least probable that he had
not been able to resist visiting Lady Ellinor, so I went first to St.
James's Square. My suspicions were correct; the Captain had been there
two hours before. Lady Ellinor herself had gone out shortly after the
Captain left. While the porter was giving me this information, a
carriage stopped at the door, and a footman, stepping up, gave the
porter a note and a small parcel, seemingly of books, saying simply,
"From the Marquis of Castleton." At the sound of that name I turned
hastily, and recognized Sir Sedley Beaudesert seated in the carriage and
looking out of the window with a dejected, moody expression of
countenance, very different from his ordinary aspect, except when the
rare sight of a gray hair or a twinge of the toothache reminded him that
he was no longer twenty-five. Indeed, the change was so great that I
exclaimed dubiously,--"Is that Sir Sedley Beaudesert?" The footman
looked at me, and touching his hat, said, with a condescending smile,
"Yes, sir, now the Marquis of Castleton."

Then, for the first time since the young lord's death, I remembered Sir
Sedley's expressions of gratitude to Lady Castleton and the waters of